Japan

From The Encyclopedia of Pointless

The Japanese flag shows how important the sun god Ra-Sama is in Japanese culture.

Everyone who has ever watched some Anime and think it's really cool to use Japanese words in everyday conversation think they have a good idea of what Japan is like. Of course these people are wrong. Can you imagine if they were right? What a boring article this would be.

History

Pre-history and WW2

What have you heard about Japanese history? If you're like most Americans or Russians, you probably heard something about lots of robes and honor and no respect for the fine art of glassmaking. Well, you're right, actually. Just throw in some stuff about wars and guns or something, and that's pretty much Japanese history in a nutshell.

Until World War Two, that is. You see, in the 1930s Japan adopted an imperialistic outlook on its neighboring countries and started taking them over, much like Germany was in Europe. The Japanese knew that America might get upset about them attacking the Philippines, so Japan decided to show their superior testicles and totally attacked the Pearl Harbor Naval Base on Hawaii. The Americans wouldn't have minded this so much, but they attacked on a Sunday, which was totally inexcusable. So the Americans turned around and started beating up the Japanese. It was a bad situation.

Long story short America trounced the Japanese and then occupied the country. The Americans made the poor Japanese do terrible things, like stop maintaining an army capable of attacking outside the country's borders or start taking in Western culture. The Emperor of Japan, who probably had an important sounding name like Emperor Leo Ardent III, put into action his country's most daring plan ever, right under the nose of the Americans.

The Decline of Japan

Starting in 1947 Japanese citizens started mysteriously vanishing. The American occupiers were curious, but not too much so since in their minds less Japanese = less fuss. Thanks to a network of natural and artificial tunnels deep under the surface of Japan its citizenry was quietly slipping away to a new nation that Emperor Leo Ardent III was creating far below the sun's warm light.

This new nation was called "Neo-Edo" because you can't have any kind of new thing without putting the prefix "Neo-" in front of it. Emperor Leo Ardent III set up Neo-Edo as a safe haven for the Japanese, where they could escape the vile influence of Western culture and live a more traditional, albiet tranquil, life. So for the next few decades Neo-Edo grew in size and, with the discovery of Truesilver deep below Mt. Fuji, the people of Neo-Edo experienced a life rich in everything but Vitamin D.

Emperor Leo Ardent III was growing bolder with his ever increasing wealth and power, and began working against the Americans, eventually helping those on the surface throw off the American's yoke and even assisting the Viet Cong by lending the tunnel technology the Neo-Edo people perfected. Soon, he told his people, Neo-Edo would erupt back to the surface and take revenge against the filthy West.

Then the unexpected happened. in the early 1970s Emperor Leo Ardent III withered away and died, thanks to sudden and fierce cancer brought on by Radon exposure. Neo-Edo was thrown into turmoil. Long ago Leo Ardent IV had left for the surface to assist the surface-dwellers and had never returned. The parliament tried valiantly to establish a new order, but without a single man to lead his people Neo-Edo lost its purpouse and began to decay.

The Advent of Technocracy

Ironically, it was thanks to Computers and Western technology that Neo-Edo was able to grasp a new purpouse. Scientists charged with the study of Western techology took the Computing concept and ran with it, using their unique knowledge of Truesilver to craft computers far beyond the state of the art in the west. Soon enough they crafted a monstrous mainframe capable of humanlike thought and speech. Into it they fed the life and memories of their beloved ruler Leo Ardent III and pushed the switch.

Their computer simulated leader was a resounding success. With a single voice to guide the nation the old prosperity quickly resumed, and industry again forged onwards, but now with a new goal: Technology. Some of this technology was shared with the surface dwellers of Japan, who used it to make Japan the world leader for new technology, and changing the perception of stuff made in Japan from "Garbage" to "Totally Rad".

The simulated emperor, now calling itself simply "Aniki", did such a good job turning Japan's technology sector around that during the 1980s everyone on earth was convinced they'd totally be speaking Japanese and wearing clear plastic jackets in a few short years.

Language

The Japanese language, "Nippon-desu", has a long and sordid history of confusing English speakers. This is in fact how the language originally started: Captured Japanese soldiers during World War II used a variation of Pig Latin because they were sick of being eavesdropped on by American soldiers. They invented a way of replacing words with other words and soon the language we all know and cannot understand today developed.

Just like most other foreign-language speakers they all speak English when nobody else is around. Speaking Japanese takes a great deal of effort, so most Japanese people just don't bother. The few who can speak exceptionally well are put on TV, since obviously it requires that the TV people always speak Japanese. Even these people will often forget how a certain English word is supposed to sound in Japanese and just use the English word instead, proving their secret fluency.